Updated Battery Life and Usage

[jaydub5]

Hello all, after my FOURTH RMHD, I thought I would refresh
this topic.
It seems everyone who was posting extremely
good battery life was not using the phone heavily, as I do.
I use my phone all day for work: Gmail, Web Research, Voice Calls.
No games, etc.
Lately I am getting 14 hours TOTAL battery life, with 6.5 hrs on screen (brightness depending on my locale... Half bright does NOT work outside), and 3 hours of Talk (Voice) time.
I have conditioned the battery NUMEROUS times, Cleared Cache, disabled all crap apps, only have ONE downloaded app running most of the time
(SwiftKey). I turn Mobile Data OFF-LIMITS when not in use. Here in NYC I get a strong 5 bar
LTE signal... NO problems.
I feel that they stats, whole passable, are not great.
I got MUCH better battery life MORE usage BEFORE
JB.
Please add your stats and offer suggestions.
Thanks.

[bweN diorD]

given your usage 14 hours is reasonable, most other phones likely couldnt do 1/2 that.
"I have conditioned the battery NUMEROUS times", you cant condition a lithium ion battery, not possible. what you are doing by trying is shortening the life of the battery.
also, your cache cleaning app probably uses more batt than it saves, if it saves any. i have almost always found all those cleaners and clearers to do more harm than good.

hope that helps...

[jaydub5]

So I guess all the others who say to let the battery run down to calibrate the phone/battery are wrong?
Clearing the cache is not done with an app, it is a system tool.
These two processes have been repeatedly recommend for best battery life.
Verizon techies also give this advice.

[bweN diorD]

yes, who ever is saying run down a lithium ion battery is wrong. they have no memory like old ni cad batteries and similar.

other than going app by app clearing cache, i assumed most would use a clearing app. some will have a custom recovery and do it that way... either way, generally, you get little benefit if any.

"Verizon techies also give this advice." for the most part, thats the blind leading the blind....

[TisMyDroid]

So I guess all the others who say to let the battery run down to calibrate the phone/battery are wrong?
Clearing the cache is not done with an app, it is a system tool.
These two processes have been repeatedly recommend for best battery life.
Verizon techies also give this advice.

This has nothing to do with battery life but has everything to do with making sure the meter that reads the battery's state of charge (soc) is accurate. Your phone reports soc as being a certain percentage but sometimes, after time, what the phone reports is not accurate (reports that you have 50% charge when really the battery may only have 10% charge or vice versa... reports 10% when really it is 70%). The battery is not getting better or worse at holding a charge but the phone is not reporting it correctly.

The way to fix this is to calibrate the meter (not the same as calibrating the battery which does not happen with these batteries). What calibrating your meter does is re-teaches the phone to read soc accurately by helping it recognize the phone's low charge flag and full flag charge. The steps to calibrating your meter are...

-With phone off, charge to 100%
-Turn phone on and use it, without charging, till it reaches 10-15% (sets the low battery level flag)
-Turn phone off and charge to 100% again (sets the high battery level flag).
-Turn phone on... use and charge your phone as you usually would.

sent from my Note2 using tapatalk 4 beta

[bweN diorD]

here is an article from Battery University How to Prolong Lithium-based Batteries - Battery University

a few key points are,
"If at all possible, avoid full discharges and charge the battery more often between uses"
"Partial discharge on Li-ion is fine; there is no memory and the battery does not need periodic full discharge cycles to prolong life"

"other than to calibrate the fuel gauge on a smart battery once in a while" if you read on, a full discharge is considered to be 10% not 0%, thats because running it down past 10% is not good for the battery. furthermore, your not actually resetting the battery your resetting the phone battery stats, which i have been told by developers, reset every time you reboot the phone.
so this part of the article no longer applies due to advancements in software.

[bweN diorD]

lol beat me to it

[TisMyDroid]

furthermore, your not actually resetting the battery your resetting the phone battery stats, which i have been told by developers, reset every time you reboot the phone.
so this part of the article no longer applies due to advancements in software.

This would explain why I have yet to feel a need to calibrate my battery meter on my note 2 where I often felt the need (and noticed a big difference) on my Maxx.

sent from my Note2 using tapatalk 4 beta

[FoxKat]

This has nothing to do with battery life but has everything to do with making sure the meter that reads the battery's state of charge (soc) is accurate. Your phone reports soc as being a certain percentage but sometimes, after time, what the phone reports is not accurate (reports that you have 50% charge when really the battery may only have 10% charge or vice versa... reports 10% when really it is 70%). The battery is not getting better or worse at holding a charge but the phone is not reporting it correctly.

The way to fix this is to calibrate the meter (not the same as calibrating the battery which does not happen with these batteries). What calibrating your meter does is re-teaches the phone to read soc accurately by helping it recognize the phone's low charge flag and full flag charge. The steps to calibrating your meter are...

-With phone off, charge to 100%
-Turn phone on and use it, without charging, till it reaches 10-15% (sets the low battery level flag)
-Turn phone off and charge to 100% again (sets the high battery level flag).
-Turn phone on... use and charge your phone as you usually would.

sent from my Note2 using tapatalk 4 beta

Excellent post and done very concisely.

here is an article from Battery University How to Prolong Lithium-based Batteries - Battery University

a few key points are,
"If at all possible, avoid full discharges and charge the battery more often between uses"
"Partial discharge on Li-ion is fine; there is no memory and the battery does not need periodic full discharge cycles to prolong life"

"other than to calibrate the fuel gauge on a smart battery once in a while" if you read on, a full discharge is considered to be 10% not 0%, thats because running it down past 10% is not good for the battery. furthermore, your not actually resetting the battery your resetting the phone battery stats, which i have been told by developers, reset every time you reboot the phone.
so this part of the article no longer applies due to advancements in software.

I agree with nearly everything but knowing how LIPO batteries operate and also how the meters try to identify SOC, I find it hard to believe they can be a software update that can eliminate the problem, although I do believe they can get better at managing the readings.

A LIPO battery isn't a static container. Its a dynamic one, and not only dynamic but diminishing in capacity over time. Every battery has its own profile and no two batteries will ever be identical, so how can any dynamic meter accurately gauge a dynamic current flow from a dynamic battery and supplying it to a dynamic load? The only easy is to "re-test" the limits and use them as new reference points. Just weeping out the battery stats is actually worse since you set things back to factory spec which is based on Brand new battery.

This would explain why I have yet to feel a need to calibrate my battery meter on my note 2 where I often felt the need (and noticed a big difference) on my Maxx.

sent from my Note2 using tapatalk 4 beta

See above. Better but not perfect.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2

[bweN diorD]

Excellent post and done very concisely.



I agree with nearly everything but knowing how LIPO batteries operate and also how the meters try to identify SOC, I find it hard to believe they can be a software update that can eliminate the problem, although I do believe they can get better at managing the readings.

A LIPO battery isn't a static container. Its a dynamic one, and not only dynamic but diminishing in capacity over time. Every battery had its ion profile and no two batteries will ever be identical, so how can any dynamic meter accurately gauge a dynamic current flow from a dynamic battery and supplying it to a dynamic load? The only easy is to "re-test" the limits and use them as new reference points. Just weeping out the battery stats is actually worse since you set things back to factory spec which is based on Brand new battery.



See above. Better but not perfect.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2

i dont know how the stats file is used exactly, i would think it uses an averaging system derived from multiple readings of voltage, load and charging state, etc. to determine a reading.
if this is the case, i would think wiping the stats more frequently leads to a generally more accurate reading because there are less numbers in the pool.
for example, if you have 20 readings that average to 5 and you add a 4 to that average, you changed the average a very small amount.
but if you have one reading that is 5 and add a 4 to it your a lot closer to the correct reading, and 5 much quicker becomes the anomaly rather than the constant.

just my 2c, i could be wrong...